Inspiration Monday: Round and Round in Circles

by Karen Alfke on August 21, 2017

As I sit and write this in my little corner of the Pacific Northwest, the moon is finishing its valiant trip across the sun, and things are slowly getting brighter and brighter. That’s a nice image to start the week with, eh?

Amidst all the hullaballo about the eclipse, I haven’t stopped thinking about the quiet brightness of Suvi Simola’sSketchbook Shawl. This beautiful, quiet design had been on the docket for last week’s Inspiration Monday until Eclipse Madness took over.

I can’t decide if it’s the sweet regularity of the yarnover lace pattern, or the simple geometry of the thing, but I’ve been a bit obsessed to cast one of these on…

I know a lot of us are fans of Blue Moon because of Tina’s masterful use of color – and the Multicolor Wave colorways are eye candy for any day of the week – but let me make an argument for the quieter side of the palette: the Spirits. “Wraithlike tints,” the Spirits are colors taken all the way to their essence; Tina says they are like homeopathy for color.

Seen side by side on their web page, you can tell the different tints apart – but get them alone and they register as a quiet version of white or off-white. I have some Jengu in La Luna Lace that’s quietly calling me to cast it on for one of these Sketchbook Shawls.

Jengu is ‘spirited from the color blue,’ and named after a mermaid-type spirit who inhabits the waterways in Cameroon and is the bearer of good fortune and healing powers to all they encounter. Sounds like an ideal Spirit to call forth in a pretty, lightweight wrap!

Two skeins and several weeks of calm-yet-entertaining knitting later, you’ll have your own Spirit to wrap yourself up in. And no matter where you live, there’s some weather coming up that would be ideal for a lightweight shawl like this over your shoulders.

In the meantime, in honor of the light returning from behind the moon, we’ll leave you with an inspiring quote from Paulo Coelho:

“You are the light of the world. Shine, and the darkness will disappear.”